During my time deploying Palo Alto Traps. I noticed something a bit concerning with the Forensics Folder security. After verifying the discovery, I raised a ticket with PA. Which confirmed my findings. The PA Traps Forensics Folder, cannot support any authentication. To visit the offical Traps site, click here Traps Terms... more

Eric Wright made a blog post titled: he Top 3 Skills Every IT Person Needs“. It’;s an excellent article, focusing on technical skills. Skills you should be learning about to stay relevant. Eric made a number of points that I’;ve taken on board. Eric’;s post is the source of inspiration... more

What is Admin Count? Before we discuss Admin Count, a little background is needed. AD contains an object called AdminSDHolder. Its purpose is to protect objects. Specifically, objects which are members of administrative groups. AD objects have an attribute called “Admin Count”. The default value is for most objects. Changing the... more

I primarily use this PowerCLI script after performing VM migrations. The script output focuses on what changed during the migration. Specifically moving to hosts running a newer version of ESXi. The script is simple to modify and adapt to fit your specific needs. Using the Script To make use of... more

RackHD is an open source project from DellEMC Code. The goal is to provide hardware management and orchestration. In order to achieve this goal, RackHD uses standard out of band management protocols. To help you get started, the documentation provides some brief tutorials. When using a Windows system. You will notice a few... more

I recently needed to create a script for the purpose of migrating data. Due to complexity, a number of scripts were used. This post covers the script I created to remove illegal characters from directory names. Also adjusting for new directory paths. Migration Overview The migration had some quirks. Due to... more

VDM30in30 is a challenge from the Virtual Design Master crew. The aim is to produce 30 pieces of content in 30 days. This content can be in any format. If you don’;t reach the 30, that’;s ok. I did not reach the goal of 30 new content pieces. I ended... more

Operations managers Intelligent workload placement used to be a challenge. Systems such as VMware’;s DRS provided simplicity. Operations managers take workload placement to another level. Ops Managers maintain a holistic view of DC performance and health. They have a large base of information to make decisions on. The more sources... more

Traditional application architecture is not optimal for cloud services. They are big, singular and designed to be always on. Cloud requires small, mobile applications which handle failure without impact. Cloud is constantly failing. Systems are crashing, misconfigurations etc. We see it as stable through application design. When we interact with... more

Data gravity imposes a significant constraint on assessing where a workload should run. Workloads perform better when close to the source of data. Data latency has a tangible cost associated. The timing might be in milliseconds, but the impact can be significant. A business loses money when employees are waiting.... more

We are going to cover the basics of user configuration that Turbonomic makes available. Authentication methods and RBAC are the two main focus areas. We will step through connecting to AD and providing users access. Authentication Methods Turbonomic provides two platforms authentication platforms. You can use local authentication and AD. AD... more

Learning new skills is essential to stay relevant. If we are not learning new things, we are going backwards. This is not to say you should study at every moment. But, there is a need to learning something new. Different people have different methods for learning. Some people learn best... more

Layer2 Invisibility L2 traffic is a major blind spot for many companies. Most security filtering only happens when traffic traverses a Layer3 boundary. If traffic does not cross this boundary, it is not scanned and not seen. Attackers can move unseen within a L2 network, due to this lack of visibility. Physical firewalls... more

Bose QC 35 headphones are considered by many as market leaders. The provide excellent comfort and effective noise cancelling. The noise cancelling excels with continuous noises, such as engines. Making frequent travellers an ideal target market. The constant drone of an engine is fatiguing. Use of noise cancelling headphones, you... more

Turbonomic is an operations management platform, built on a rich set of APIs. It has the capability to connect to many different systems and gather extensive datasets. This entry will cover the fundamentals of Desired State and Virtual Market Place. These two components are the basis for Turbonomics recommendations. Platform... more